Back from SOMESSO, home and dry

I’ve not blogged in a while here; I became a little too Twitter fixated. So on my return, I’d like to share with you my experiences in contributing to a pan-European social media conference called SOMESSO.

The intended difference between this and other  social media conferences catering ta similar, corporate audience was that it was about facilitating a new way of thinking about what social technologies are and what their relationship is to the way in which we do business. It was to do away with the notion that the best way of ‘dealing with’ social media was as a security or compliance threat or something to be blocked by the IT department; and instead illustrate using live case studies of organisations using and applying things like enterprise social networks, reserach communities, online ambassador programmes, blogger relations programmes in ways that allow organisations to be better listeners. Ways that prompt corporations to do things in a more flexible and empathetic way. Or as it was helpfully summed up “more about people rather than processes.” I feel that we made an important step forward in terms of sharing ideas that are vital for bringing about that sense of change. It would be good to know what you thought as well.